


Disguises for sentiment

by greymissed



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-01 20:00:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15781062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greymissed/pseuds/greymissed
Summary: How Sherlock went from walking away from The Woman, to rescuing her in Karachi.OrHow Sherlock talked himself into saving The Woman.





	Disguises for sentiment

It begins when he walks out of the Diogenes Club, trying to erase the memory of The Woman’s tearstained face from his mind. He deletes everything else that does not serve him with ease, but in this case he finds that for all that he tries, he cannot. A deep unease has settled over him which he cannot ignore as he tries to go about his daily affairs.

 

The month after he condemns The Woman is the hardest one of his life so far.

 

It is not hard in the sense of being difficult or mentally or physically challenging, the way a complex case may be. Neither is it the emotional anguish of the time he’d thought The Woman had been killed.

 

No, this is more psychological torment – a battle taking place in his very being, everything he has believed and told himself about who he is and what he stands for warring with what he _wants_ now, desperately, to do.

 

What he _wants_ , of course, is neither logical nor rational.

 

Logic dictates that he leave things be. She’s made her bed, and now has to lie in it. Far be it from him to interfere in the natural order of things, in cause and effect. Common criminals have suffered for far less, and he has always left them to suffer the consequences of their actions.

 

And she is no common criminal but treasonous, a threat to the Crown, a fugitive. All she’d said about wanting protection was a lie – or at least not the entire story. Ultimately it had been about extracting the best deal for herself. She’d been working with Jim Moriarty. She’d picked her side, and it was decidedly not that of the angels. As far as Sherlock was concerned, this meant that he could not –would not – help her; she was on her own.

 

Was that what had driven him to act so indifferently towards her that night, after tearing down what she had so painstakingly built? After all, his feelings about The Woman are myriad and complex, but indifference has never been one of them. Was it some kind of retaliation, a knee-jerk reaction to what she’d revealed about Jim Moriarty’s involvement and her declaration of Jim as her kind of man, (the latter of which he knew to be untrue anyway by dint of her sentiment)?

 

Well, it doesn’t matter anymore. The Woman is as good as dead. The commonsensical thing to do would be to move on with his life, forget her and forget the past six months except as a reminder of a painful lesson.

 

Except that he can’t. Her dark eyes and painted lips and the long, pale curve of her neck are burned into the back of his eyelids. When he closes his eyes, she is there taunting him, scenes from their last meeting replaying like a broken tape.

 

_Are you expecting me to beg?_

_Please._

 

It doesn’t help that everything reminds him of The Woman. On his return to 221B Baker Street after that fateful night, he’d found that although the steam had escaped from his bathroom, the scent of the shower the Woman had taken still lingered. His sheets were still rumpled and carried a trace of the Woman’s own unique scent – a blend of Casmir perfume and lilacs. It was the same blend of scents that had lingered on his coat after she’d returned it. The robe she had borrowed to wear was nowhere to be found. Had she left the apartment in it? If so, he was unlikely to ever see it again. The thought had left a strange taste in his mouth that had nothing to do with the fifty pounds the robe had cost. He got no sleep that night. The next day, he had Mrs Hudson change the sheets.

 

Still, The Woman’s presence continues to haunt his apartment like a ghost. The desk reminds him of her promise to make him beg twice. The armchair recalls thoughts of her invitation to dinner, the feel of her pulse under his fingertips. He’d been tempted that evening – out of curiosity if nothing else – to accept her invitation to dinner… and what if he had? What if things had gone differently that night? But really – no point dwelling on such things. It is in the past now, and no amount of thinking will change what has happened.

 

There is some regret, and a trace of guilt. He’d turned her triumph into humiliation. But then why should he feel guilty? She is the one who’d decided to take on the British Government and the Crown. She is the one who’d taken the risk of misbehaving. She is the one who’d used him. Still, these justifications do nothing to quell his internal unrest. He tries not to wonder where she might be, what she might be doing.

 

He turns to distractions. Cases, biopsies, chemical experiments that are possibly not quite legal – even a jaunt to a pub with Lestrade one Friday evening which he’d sorely regretted agreeing to.

 

He plays the violin often, to clear his head. Beneath it all he doesn’t give himself permission to feel what hints of longing and emptiness – John might call it missing The Woman, but Sherlock knows better. It can’t be that; he’s never missed anyone in his life.

 

Still, it would be a blessed relief not to feel anything at all.

 

No more than six months, she’d given herself. It is a death sentence. No more than six months before The Woman would lose her life and the world would lose The Woman.

 

It is a prediction he does not disagree with, based on known facts about The Woman’s capabilities and that of her enemies and the likely effect of her loss of protection.

 

He can’t turn off the clock loudly ticking in his mind. Five months and twenty-six days. Twenty-five. Twenty-four. Is she still alive? She must be, because she is The Woman; she can’t be dead already. But five months and twenty-four days later, will she still be alive? Her bet had been on _no_.

 

He does not delete her number from his phone (though he has it memorized anyway), nor her customized text alert, but his phone does not moan. He doesn’t expect it to – she must have changed her number – but still he feels something like disappointment when his phone remains resolutely silent.

 

There is, unsurprisingly, no update on her twitter account, and as the days trickle by, he finds it hard to focus even on his work.

 

This goes on until one day, while in the kitchen having a biscuit, he hears a moan. His head snaps up and his senses immediately go on high alert, before his brain catches up and quickly quashes the flare of what had felt like hope. Of course it is not The Woman, but only the stupid telly; the sound came from the wrong direction and sounds nothing at all like her. Still, he is left catching his breath, and something in him seems to snap.

 

He begins calling on his connections around the world to begin his work of tracking The Woman’s whereabouts. He is simply after knowledge, he tells himself. He just wants to know if their estimate is correct. It is no different from any kind of experiment; only through tracking the results will he be able to tell if the hypothesis is correct. The adrenaline running through his veins is no different from that which he has an abundance of when solving a mystery.

 

Finding The Woman, however, turns out to be harder than he thought. To her credit, she seems to have successfully evaded detection. None of his contacts have caught a whiff of her since she’d boarded a train to Manchester the very same night he last saw her.

 

It should not be all that surprising. She did, after all, beat him several times, even tricking him into believing her dead; it should come as no surprise that she has the means and the cunning to shake off whoever might be trying to track her down.

 

He will have to look into this himself.

 

He spends the first night hacking into CCTV footage of a few major airports and train terminals, and scouring them for signs of The Woman. He marks a map with her known haunts and ex-clients, though he suspects that the information he is working off has already been curated for public knowledge, and that the true extent of her influence extends far beyond that.

 

He haunts online forums, tapping on the personas he invented several years ago for precisely the sort of situation where he would need information on things happening off British soil. The Internet has been an invaluable source of information when it comes to such things. John thinks he borrows his laptop to watch porn, but really he has been cultivating these personas – a Biology professor from Portland, Maine, now retired in Japan; a wealthy but sheltered heiress from New Brunswick; a repressed religious fanatic living a mundane life in a suburb in Virginia; an IT technician from Bangladesh; a lonely, widowed mother of three from Sydney; to name a few…

 

His enquiries with several telecommunications service providers suggest that she has not terminated her mobile phone line. It is a monumentally foolish thing not to have done – as long as she keeps using her line, she (or at least her phone) can be easily traced. Perhaps it is being used as a decoy?

 

He hits a few dead ends, and refuses to acknowledge the dread curling in his gut that perhaps The Woman is nowhere to be found because she is already dead.

 

Still he soldiers on, thirty-four hours of searching on no sleep. He is like a man obsessed. But then moderation has never been one of his strong traits.

 

At forty-six hours, he finally gets a lead. A woman matching The Woman’s height, build and colouring has been spotted in a part of Turkey that is not usually frequented by tourists. His source sends him a photo and, despite its grainy quality and the fact that it was taken at a distance and at an awkward angle, it is indeed The Woman – sporting brown contact lenses and not a trace of makeup, her dark hair tucked into a headscarf, but it is unmistakably her. He lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

 

With a sense of relief that he chooses not to dwell on, he finally falls sleeps for the first time in days, and dreams about boarding a flight to Turkey.

 

Having satisfied himself that The Woman is still alive and kicking, he gets back to work on his cases, but takes to “watching” her through his various contacts and methods. He tells himself that it’s because The Woman is so much more entertaining than anything there is on British telly at the moment anyway. And it is true – it seems The Woman can’t help being The Woman, wherever she is.

 

He “watches” her travel through Turkey and Iran before it occurs to him that her reason for travelling through the Middle East is not simply to try to blend in in places where no one would look twice at a woman covered from head to toe. That may be a strategic move for a notorious dominatrix with enemies in high places, but The Woman is also smart enough to know that travelling alone in the outskirts of that region as a female is potentially risky. And she is not exactly keeping a low profile – although always in disguise, she attends a few high profile events under various identities and meets with the who’s who of the region. Could it just be that she’s trying to carry on with her life and her profession in a different part of the world? No – she is there for a reason. _What, though?_

 

His mind filters through various possibilities and discards them, before finally alighting on one that he’d not previously considered – interference from Mycroft.

 

He’d told his brother to incarcerate her or let her go – but what if Mycroft had instead struck some kind of deal with The Woman – perhaps to carry out some kind of dangerous mission and earn a pardon? After all, she is a skilled liar and manipulator, and having her rather than anyone under the employ of the British government carry out the mission means it’d be off the record. Knowing Mycroft, the mission is nigh impossible, but The Woman could be desperate enough to agree. After all, she has nothing more to lose – except her life.

 

The more he considers the possibility, the more he is certain that this is what it is. It is entirely within Mycroft’s powers, and in keeping with Mycroft’s style of engineering a win-win situation – if The Woman succeeds, the mission will have been carried out and it would be easy enough to justify granting her a pardon; if she does not, she will probably be dead and any threat she poses will be extinguished.

 

The fact that she is not simply on the run from her enemies but is also trying to carry out some kind of mission in the midst of it would mean that her estimate of six months was overly generous.

 

This knowledge has him wavering between a gnawing restlessness and studied indifference. He considers confronting Mycroft, but decides against it – it wouldn’t do for Mycroft to find out he’s cognizant of The Woman’s whereabouts at all. And he certainly isn’t in a position to explain to Mycroft _why_ and _how_ he’s come to be cognizant of The Woman’s whereabouts when he’s not even sure of his motives himself.

 

Before he can decide what to do, however, she suddenly falls off his radar. For the six days that The Woman has been in Pakistan, his contact Hassan has sent him an update at 5.30pm London time each day _–_ a brief description of The Woman’s location, sometimes accompanied by a blurry snapshot of The Woman. But on day thirty-eight _(four months and twenty-one days to go, based on the original estimate of six months)_ , the text simply states: “ _woman did not return to inn tonight. will update tomorrow._ ”

 

Although there are thirteen – no, twelve – plausible explanations for this, he is left imagining the worst. He spends the next day pacing around his apartment and harassing Mrs Hudson for copious amounts of tea, before caving in and chasing Hassan for an early update. Hassan’s reply is of no comfort: “ _still_ _no sign. she has not checked out. things still at inn._ ”

 

For the first time since he’d started watching her, a kind of desperation sets in.

 

He spends half a day trying to uncover clues as to where she might have gone, until another one of his contacts – a young recruit in one of the terrorist cells operating in Pakistan whom he’d met through an Internet chat room – boasts that he has been conferred the honour of killing the foreign woman that his group has just captured. Foreigners are sometimes used as hostage and bartered, but she’d nearly managed to escape, and so they’ve decided to kill her and make an example of her.

 

Swallowing his rising panic, Sherlock spends the next half hour extracting details and convincing his “friend” that there is an auspicious time for such killing and to put it off until he can be certain of his role being properly recognized. The recruit assures him that such executions are usually carried out on Thursdays at sunset and gushes about finally getting to try his new blade on a neck.

 

Visceral fear takes ahold of Sherlock as a mental video of The Woman at the mercy of this man’s blade plays out vividly in his mind. _Thursday_. That gives him three days. If he does nothing, The Woman will die.

 

He thinks of the first time he’d thought she was dead. How a chill had run down his spine in the midst of all the festive frippery when he’d realized what her Christmas gift to him meant. And how, seeing what he’d thought was her lifeless body on a slab in the morgue, something in him had shriveled up at the idea of The Woman no longer being in the world, in _his_ world, her eyes no longer sparkling with mischief, her characteristic bright red smirk forever wiped from her face, which had been mangled beyond recognition.

 

He books the next flight to Karachi, Pakistan, before he is even sure of what he is doing. He’d had to deal with her death once; he will not do it again.

 

Uncharacteristically, he is without any sort of plan. All he is conscious of is the need to get to The Woman as soon as possible. He is as unprepared as they come, but he will figure it out along the way. This is too delicate a matter to leave to others.

 

He packs a bag and invents an excuse for John and Mrs Hudson. His brother is unlikely to contact him in the next week but, for Mycroft’s benefit, he leaves a trail of breadcrumbs corroborating the story he has invented.

 

Preliminaries taken care of, he boards the flight to Karachi, his brain working all the time – mapping out the city, and then the area, and then the warehouse in which The Woman is being kept; brushing up on the pitifully little Sindhi he knows; devising the best way to infiltrate the terrorist group and thereafter get two persons out of the vicinity safely; plotting various escape routes; considering potential safe houses; working out how they can convincingly fake her death (although he’s sure The Woman will have some ideas of her own on that).

 

As his mind whirrs, a tiny – but dogged – part of it questions his motives – _What is he doing? Why does he even care what becomes of The Woman? Isn’t this just the natural consequence of her actions? Shouldn’t he let nature run its course? Why is he going to such lengths?_ He shoves these questions into a locked room in his Mind Palace. He needs to concentrate, or The Woman will die.

 

When, and only when, he has worked out the permutations of various scenarios from beginning to end and decided on the most viable plan does he – with no small amount of hesitation – open the door to that locked room. He would prefer not to have to deal with these questions at all, but they demand answers and so will The Woman, when he rescues her, and he needs to be prepared.

 

The floodgates released, the questions come at him, and the full force of what he is doing – and for whom – hits him with a staggering blow. He tries to stem the tide of questions, and answer them one at a time. Thoughtfully. Rationally. For that is what he is – a rational man. There must be a perfectly good explanation for all of this.

 

_What, indeed, is he doing?_

He is going to extricate The Woman from the terrorist cell and, in doing so, make sure she does not die. In the course of this, he’s going to have to steal a car, learn some basic Sindhi, infiltrate a terrorist cell, impersonate a recruit, and possibly kill (or at least maim) several men.

 

_Why does he even care what becomes of The Woman?_

 

It is true that he barely knows The Woman. But he can say with certainty that every encounter with her has left him with the impression that she was – is – extraordinary.

 

She’d beaten him, several times. She’d kept him on his toes for _months_ trying to figure out her passcode. She is brilliant and impetuous and fascinating and remains – save for the one time he’d figured out her sentiment and accordingly the passcode to her phone – an utter mystery to him.

 

The world is frankly full of idiots, and it would be an utter waste for such an extraordinary person to have her life prematurely cut short like this. So, it is perfectly rational for him to care what becomes of The Woman. He is simply… trying to preserve what is undoubtedly excellent genetic material. For science, and for humanity’s continued proliferation on this planet. (Never mind the fact that he can’t imagine The Woman ever having or taking care of a child.)

 

_But she is not the first extraordinary person he’s come across, is she? And yet he’s chosen to save only her._

 

Well. This is a tricky one, isn’t it?

 

Perhaps there is an element of guilt. She’d had it all right there in the palm of her hand before it had been snatched away. If not for her foolish sentiment, she would be a free woman, and an incredibly rich and powerful one. As it is, she is now facing a very real probability of death, and he cannot stomach that he is the cause – whether as the subject of her passcode, or as the person who unlocked it.

 

_But he’d let all the other criminals he’s exposed reap the consequences of their wrongdoing. Why not The Woman?_

 

Why not, indeed? Perhaps it is because she was never actively out to hurt anyone. She just enjoyed misbehaving, and wanted protection.

 

And she had pleaded with him, after all. She’d begged, with tears in her eyes, and he’d turned around and walked away. And now… now he wishes he hadn’t. With his predictive abilities, regret is an emotion generally quite unknown to Sherlock, but what he’s been feeling is unmistakably that.

 

_Isn’t this just the natural consequence of her actions? Shouldn’t he let nature run its course?_

Well, this isn’t quite natural, is it? It would be murder, really.

 

And as a Consulting Detective who solves murders, it would be antithetical to what he does to stand by and let a planned murder take place. Not when he has the ability to stop it. Even if stopping it involves him flying halfway across the world and assuming risks to his person that he wouldn’t normally assume.

 

_Why is he going to such lengths though? Can’t he simply inform Mycroft and let the British Government deal with it?_

 

For one, Mycroft and the British Government cannot know of his involvement in any of this. He has no wish to explain to them how he came to know of The Woman’s plight, nor why he was following The Woman in the first place.

 

Not to mention that even though this is partly Mycroft’s doing, he highly doubts that Mycroft will so much as lift a finger to help The Woman. And if that were to be the case, Sherlock would still try to rescue The Woman, only now he would have the additional problem of trying to hide his involvement from Mycroft, who would already be alerted to the fact that Sherlock knows about The Woman’s plight. That would be a very tricky situation, and not one he particularly wants to deal with.

 

_But does that really justify him going to such lengths to save her? If it were anyone else in danger – anyone he’d encountered only a handful of times and texted once – would he have done the same? Why, truly, is he here on this aircraft now, flying halfway across the world to get to The Woman and her captors?_

 

He has the uncomfortable feeling that none of his earlier answers really pass muster. Really, the Woman would see through them at once and see them for what they really are.

 

_Which is?_

_A disguise for sentiment._ The words come unbidden to his mind, so disquieting that he actually starts in his seat.

 

He is aghast at the thought. Every fibre of him revolts against even considering the possibility – and to him it is impossible that he should fall prey to something so… ordinary. But how else can he explain his actions? How else can he explain the past month of torment?

 

He recalls with painful clarity the harsh words he had spoken to her at their last meeting.

 

_Sentiment is a chemical defect found in the losing side._

_This is your heart, and you should never let it rule your head._

_I’ve always assumed that love is a dangerous disadvantage... Thank you for the final proof._

 

Had his warnings about sentiment been for The Woman, or for himself?

 

He is no longer certain.

 

The plane begins its descent into Karachi as this last thought blooms and lodges itself uncomfortably in his mind, and it occurs to him that he’s going to have to come up with a better excuse, and soon.

 

_Shit._


End file.
